Moses Biography Looks for 'Proof' but Misses the Man

Giedl, Linda L., The Christian Science Monitor

MOSES: A LIFE By Jonathan Kirsch Ballantine 415 pp., $27.50
Moses
is in the public eye these days. While the American impeachment
drama unfolded, Time magazine put him on their cover (Dec. 14),
asking, "Who was Moses?" DreamWorks has animated him into epic
grandeur for their feature-length film "The Prince of Egypt."
Several new books about him are on bookstore shelves. Why all the
attention to this towering figure of monotheism who gave humanity
the
Ten Commandments? Time's David Van Biema says it's "in our nature
to search for heroes, and Moses, rebel and saint, is as relevant
today as he ever was." Moses, like other major Bible characters and
events, has come under historical scrutiny. Biblical scholars and
archaeologists feel they must respond to new demands for "proof."
On his own quest for the truth about Moses, Jonathan Kirsch,
attorney, book critic, and author of bestselling "The Harlot by the
Side of the Road," has written "Moses: A Life." In this biography,
which was a primary source for the Time article, Kirsch has pieced
together hundreds of quotes and fragments of information about Moses
from various ancient and modern sources. He has employed them to
explain discrepancies in the biblical account, fill gaps and
omissions, sketch in best guesses about the multiple authorship of
the five books attributed to Moses, and confront what he sees as the
more troublesome features of Moses' personality and relationship
with
God. "To discern the real Moses," Kirsch writes, "we will need to
excavate the layers of elaboration under which the figure of Moses
has been buried, dust off the oldest relics of his life and work,
and
hold them up to the light." The results of his search, rather than
enlightening, are, frankly, disappointing. Kirsch presents Moses as
a reluctant "magic-worker rather than a strict monotheist" -
complex,
flawed, temperamental, even murderous - acting in grudging but
steadfast obedience to a man- like, magical, demanding, vengeful
tribal deity. …

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